Your credit report is the record of many things you have done financially. It is important because it can come into play when you try to get mortgages, auto loans, or even title loans.

Enjoy the convenience of online banking with ICCU - the Illinois Community Credit Union - Our goal is to return our profits to our members by offering more service with lower rates on services such as Dekalb Mortgages and Sycamore Auto Loans.

Getting a handle on why it is important is the start of getting control of your credit report. Then you have to go about the business of enhancing it and protecting it from harm. Your credit report can be harmed either by your own doing or by some of the more modern criminal tactics, like identity theft.

There are three major credit reporting bureaus and they all produce a report for every consumer. When you apply for or receive credit from a credit granting institution (such as a bank or large company) the credit reporting agencies are informed that you now have a new account. Then they also report on your credit activity. This means that if you make your payments on time and you are responsible with your loans, they will report this to the credit agencies.

In theory all your transactions are reported and so your credit report is supposed to be an accurate summary of your credit history with every significant lending agency. This process is not perfect by any means. Some things don’t show up at all, and others are out of date. Such an imperfect system requires each of us to be diligent to check the accuracy of our credit reports.

An individual consumer can get a copy of his or her credit report from the reporting agencies at no cost once a year. In the Dekalb and Sycamore area this can be very useful when applying for a mortgage or car loan. This can be obtained online through each of the reporting agency websites. Additionally, consumers can pay to have their credit report at any time and many websites offer monitoring to make sure that everything on your report is correct.